The IBM PCjr

After conquering the business computer market in 1983, IBM
decided that they could expand their business to the home market with
a redesigned version of the IBM PC. Cheaper and more tailored to the
needs of the entire home, they launched the IBM PCjr in 1984.

To better compete with the other home PCs of the time like the Commodore
64 and Apple ][, they made several changes to the "stock" IBM PC.
More appealing to home users since they were fast and durable, IBM put
two cartridge ports on the PCjr. Games and educational titles could be
loaded easily and quickly by children; they just push the cart in and
turn it on. No commands to learn (or floppy disks to bend).

An extremely significant design enhancement made to the PCjr was
increased graphics and sound capabilities. In addition to CGA's normal
320x200x4 and 640x200x2 limited-color and monochrome graphics modes,
the PCjr was also able to produce 160x100x16, 160x200x16, 320x200x16,
and 640x200x4 color graphics modes--the 16-color modes used the same
color palette as color text mode. The sound enhancement came from
the addition of a Texas Instruments SN76496 chip, a three-voice tone
generator. This increased the number of voices from one to three, with 16
volume levels for each channel, and noise-generation for sound effects.
IBM was banking on these enhancements to propel the PCjr to the top of
the heap, so to help it along they hired Sierra
specifically to do a next-generation PCjr game that would use the extra
colors and sound. This resulted in the genre-creating King's
Quest, but also explains one of the reasons why early Sierra
games only used a resolution of 160x200 even when higher resolutions were
available: 160x200 in 16 colors was the PCjr resolution used for King's
Quest, and they kept using the same graphics engine in their games for
several years.

In addition to the enhanced graphics and sound capabilities, IBM
decided to create a new keyboard for the PCjr with two drastic design
changes: It was wireless, and it used rubber "chiclet" keys. The use of chiclet
keys was an interesting decision, apparently made mainly to ease
home users into computing. "My copy of king's quest 1 had a template
for the chicklet keyboard with all the commands on it. That was the
whole idea behind the keyboard, so that software people can give you a
template to put over your keyboard that shows what all the functions do."
j And the wireless keyboard
was very convienent; you could type while reclining in your favorite easy
chair, and since there was a RCA jack for composite color output to TV,
you could hook it up to the family TV for everyone's enjoyment. While the
keyboard was wireless, it could be connected to the PCjr directly for when
you had no batteries. "The keyboard cord was pretty cool; it was simply a
flat telephone-like wire. It even had an RJ11-type phone plug for hooking
it to the keyboard." j

Unfortunately, the PCjr didn't do well. The launch of the PCjr was
overshadowed by Apple's much more intriguing launch of the Macintosh
at the same time. But, marketing aside, the PCjr was almost doomed to
fail due to some serious design flaws that even the enhanced graphics and
sound couldn't fix. The keyboard, what IBM thought would be considered a
great innovation, was ultimately its largest drawback--while it claimed
you could be 6 feet or more away from the computer in wireless mode,
most people found they had to be no further than about two or three feet
from the computer. This distance limitation itself was only part of the
problem: "It was a 14-inch monitor, so how far away would you possibly
want to sit away from it?"j
The AA batteries that powered the keyboard in wireless mode would also
drain fairly quickly. In an effort to make the keyboard fit onto your
lap easier, the key layout was compressed into a smaller form factor,
so the function keys shared space with the normal 1-0 keys. To enter a
function key, you had to hold down an "Fn" key as you pressed
a number key. The numeric keypad was also dropped. As if all this wasn't
enough, the rubber "chiclet" keys proved almost unusable for touch typing,
making word processing for experienced typists a chore.

There were other drawbacks as
well that put the final nails in the coffin: The PCjr's expandibility
was not as well thought-out as the PC. Expansion was performed through
the use of modules that attached to the side of the machine. You could
continue to add modules, but this kept expanding the side of the machine.
"Memory expansion on the PCjr was via these 2" thick side addition
thingies. You simply remove the cover on the side of the main unit
and screw one of these things onto it, then attach the cover onto the
add-on unit and you can keep building it from there. (Kind of like lego
building blocks.) If you wanted to upgrade from the stock 128k to 640k,
you'd wind up with an additional 8 inches of computer! If I recall,
the parallel port was also in one of these side card things. So if you
wanted everything maxed out, it looked REALLY dorky. Eventually 3rd
party companies came around for replacing the memory in a 128k addon
card so that you could upgrade to 640k with only 1 add-on piece."j Finally, the cartridge
ports never really caught on, since software from companies other than
IBM was very slow in coming, and the cartridge versions were never really
as powerful as the diskette versions due to the smaller storage capacity
of carts.

IBM attempted some disaster recovery a year later with the release of a
new keyboard. Gone were the rubber chiclet keys, replaced by true keys
(albeit still with a reduced-size layout). The power consumption and response
of the keyboard's wireless operation was improved as well. But by this
time, it was too late; other manufacturers had either eclipsed the PCjr's
graphics or sound capabilities (Commodore 64, Amiga 500), or cost
less (Commodore 64, Atari ST), or had a large established base of
educational titles (Apple ][)--all of which appealed to home buyers.

IBM eventually discontinued the PCjr less than two years after its
release, a dismal failure.

The Tandy 1000

Tandy saw the huge success of the IBM PC and wanted to get
into the market so that its large base of TRS-80 users had something
viable to upgrade to. At the time Tandy was evaluating the PC market,
the PC AT didn't exist yet, only the PC XT and the PCjr--and the PCjr
had better graphics and sound. So it was natural for Tandy to choose
the PCjr as the machine to clone.

The only problem was that the PCjr was selling very badly before the Tandy 1000 was released. Tandy quickly
changed all the advertising and marketing to take the focus away from
the PCjr. "All they needed to created the monster 'white elephant'
of all time was to announce the 1000 as a PCjr compatible. :-) So
that's why the catalogs showed the machine as an MS-DOS compatible -
which it was, but none of their advertising called it 'PC compatible' -
though many consumers relate 'MS-DOS compatible' to mean 'PC compatible.'"
b

The Tandy 1000 was indeed a strange beast: The graphics and sound
were mostly compatible with the PCjr's enhanced graphics and sound,
but the keyboard and joystick connections were neither PC nor PCjr
compatible--they were large, round, circular DIN connectors that were
pin-for-pin compatible with the TRS-80 line. The Tandy 1000 also included
the RCA TV output jack of the PCjr, so that TRS-80 users who had used
their TVs as monitors could continue to do so. Because of this and
other design changes (such as the length of the case, which was about two
inches too short to accept full-length expansion cards), Tandy was
criticized for creating a seemingly proprietary machine. "It was not
proprietary. It was completely software compatible with the machine it
was meant to be a copy of, the IBM PCJr. The only problem was that the
PCJr was not a successful product and was discontinued just weeks before
the 1000 came out."f

Despite this, the Tandy 1000 because successful whereas the PCjr had not.
The keyboard, while still slightly awkward, was not the horrific "chiclet"
keyboard that the PCjr had used. Tandy's Radio Shack line of stores
also made purchasing the computer easy--you could walk into any Radio
Shack with a fistfull of cash and walk out with a Tandy 1000, complete
with software and accessories. For the TRS-80 customers who wanted
to upgrade, the base unit was all they needed, since they could reuse
their existing monitor/TV, joysticks, printers, etc.

The best thing about the Tandy 1000 becoming successful was that it still
retained the enhanced graphics and sound capabilities of the PCjr--and
game companies noticed. Over 300 game titles were released in the 1980's
that use the extra colors or sound to enhance the game. Because of these
game titles, some of which directly drove the sales of the Tandy 1000,
Tandy decided to keep the enhanced graphics and sound in future models.
"It became its own standard. Many times over the next few years, design
decisions were made to be PC AT compatible or be 1000 compatible within
the 1000 line."f
Because of this, gaming on the PC platform was changed forever. We take
the inclusion of sound and music into today's games for granted, but it
was innovative and ahead of its time in 1985.

Once VGA and sound boards became mainstream, there was little reason to
own a Tandy that specifically catered to the old standards. "The Tandy
1000 TL/3, 1000 RL/2 and 1000 RL-HD were the last. Most of these appeared
in the 1992 catalog (printed Fall 1991). The 1000-RLX that appeared in
the fall of 1992 was VGA-based, but still had the PSSJ sound hardware,
as did the 1000-RSX."f

A: IBM came to me a long time ago and asked me to write an adventure-type game for the forthcoming PCjr.
They said it couldn't be like any other adventure game that had been done and it had to be replayable.
And my type of game, usually, when you solve it once, that's it. There's no reason to play it again.

Q: That's true of most adventure games, isn't it?

A: Yes, except the fantasy/role playing games. Ultima or Wizardry you can replay because you have a
character generator and you can make different things happen. But that's not my style. In effect, IBM
was asking me to go against my style. And I couldn't think of any way to make my kind of game replayable
without having a character generator. I thought a long time about this. I'd always wanted to have an
animated adventure game, but the game I foresaw really couldn't be done on a computer that existed up to
that point in time. Then I found out what the PCjr was capable of. I was really happy when I found out
that this computer could do things other computers could not do. I could finally have my animated
adventure game.

Q: What's so special about the PCjr?

A: It has sixteen solid colors. It's hard to do animation with artifacted colors [using patterns to
simulate different colors--Ed.], but with solid colors things are much easier. Also, it has more
memory -- 128K -- and it takes a lot of memory to do animation. My game will be available on the PCjr
only until other computers come up to the game's requirements.

...some of interview skipped for brevity...

Q: And this is all done with graphics as beautiful as those from The Dark Crystal?

A: Better. The graphics are great. Your character is full color and the game has sound going most of the
time. You hear little birds singing and doors creaking open and other things like that.

Nostalgia wears rose-colored glasses, though, so I find it
necessary to point out a couple of things that changed since
that interview: King's Quest did indeed first only come out
for the PCjr, but when it became apparent that the PCjr wasn't
going to be the blockbuster success IBM predicted, Sierra quickly
ported it to the PC, where it sold like gangbusters. They were
able to port it so quickly because of the great design of their gaming
interpreter, which they used for many different games and sequels
from 1984 to 1989. Their interpreter was eventually ported to other home
computer systems as well, bringing King's Quest along with it. Also,
King's Quest wasn't really replayable, but it was difficult to reach a
perfect score for completing all the steps, so you usually played it again
to get a perfect score. (This was a far cry from the true replayability
of Wizardry or Ultima, however, which she mentioned in the interview.)

Tandy 3-voice sound was a decent improvement over the PC speaker; you
could have three distinct sound channels and 16 volume levels per channel.
It doesn't sound like much, but it turned the harsh internal speaker
into a nice melodic or sound effects device. Here's some comparisons:

The 16-color palette of the PCjr and Tandy's new graphics modes was nothing
amazing; it was the same 16 colors as text mode. But it still made one
hell of a difference! One look at these comparisons and you can begin
to see the rationale behind IBM's thinking--the graphics equaled or
exceeded the capabilities of every other home computer of that time:

A Comparison of CGA and PCjr/Tandy 1000 Enhanced Graphics

King's Quest (160x200 screenshots taken from the 1987 re-release)

4-color CGA (blue, green, yellow, red; patterns)

16-color PCjr/Tandy 1000

It's interesting to note that the CGA screens aren't bad at all, given the
limited color palette Sierra had to work with. The PCjr/Tandy screens are
obviously better, but some clever use of patterns resulted in some good
color approximations on CGA--for example, the three flags at the top of
the castle and the cloth crests on the side of the castle in King's Quest.

After King's Quest, Sierra stopped trying to make the 4-color CGA graphics
look as good as they did, and concentrated on making the high-resolution 16-color
graphics modes even better using 16-color patterns (a trick they learned
supporting CGA). EGA was out by this time, but required an expensive
video card upgrade. PCjr/Tandy users weren't disappointed at all,
and got to see the enhancements without upgrading since their graphics
subsystem already supported 320x200x16:

Other Sierra Games (320x200 screenshots)

4-color CGA (cyan, red, white, black; patterns)

16-color PCjr/Tandy 1000

In the second Leisure Suit Larry 2 screenshot above, you can see that CGA was at a disadvantage: The name
of the barber shop is only visible in 16 colors.

Finally, you can see the improvement that 16-color PCjr/Tandy graphics had over regular CGA graphics in
other various games:

After 1988 or so, game companies were very quick to support the enhanced
graphics and sound and advertise that fact on their packaging. But from
1984-1987, enhanced support trickled into some game titles without notice;
if you didn't have a PCjr/Tandy at the time, you would have completely
missed it.

Thanks to supercooled futuristic technology, I've been able to capture
and reproduce these hidden bits and pass the fun onto you. Some people
went through a lot of trouble to support this new (at the time) emerging
hardware after a comfortable 4 years of CGA and the PC speaker, and it
would be a shame if this effort was lost forever. There's quite a bit
of enhanced support here and there; for example:

Rendezvous with Rama starts playing an original title score (.AU/.MP3) when the introduction to the game is shown.

Boulderdash (and its variants) displayed a different color palette and had enhanced sound effects during gameplay.

The PC version of Three Stooges had 16-color graphics, digitized sound, and 3-voice music on Tandys.

Starflight originally only supported 16-color graphics on composite CGA and the PCjr/Tandy. (A later version supported EGA, but this version was released after the game lost popularity and is very hard to find.)

Every single non-VGA game made by Sierra since 1984 has had enhanced PCjr/Tandy graphics and sound support.

Microprose's Pirates! had a small snippet of 3-voice music scattered throughout the game.

Epyx's Touchdown Football featured clear digitized sound as early as 1984--but only on the PCjr/Tandy's 3-voice chip. This was a PCjr-only title (the sound comes through on the Tandy, but the graphics don't display for some reason).

The 16-color graphics modes were a programming nightmare. They were
similar to CGA, as they were also interlaced, but this time in four
passes instead of two. :-P Another nasty thing was IBM's
way of saving money: whenever you go into an extended graphics mode,
it borrows RAM from the top of the free DOS heap -- your available
DOS memory actually decreases by as much as 32K. Just make sure you
don't have anything in that area before you initialize graphics mode...
;-) This is why you see things like "Requires 256K for EGA,
384K for Tandy" on old game requirement descriptions, since the extra bit
of DOS RAM needed to fuel graphics modes pushed the memory requirements
over the edge.

Thanks to the RCA composite video output jack that was built into the
PCjr and Tandy 1000, you could get 16-color graphics on some titles that
didn't specifically support PCjr/Tandy special graphics, but did
support 16-color composite color mode (which "translates" the 640x200x2
mode into a 160x200x16 mode). Starflight used this, as did California
Games, and some others. You got 16 real colors--using the same method
as the Apple ][.

The Tandy 1000 and 1000 HD are actually slightly *slower* than 4.77MHz --
my testing shows them at about 4.6 MHz. But that doesn't make them the slowest PCs ever released; that award goes to the IBM PCjr thanks to IBM removing a few components (like fully-working DMA) and running programs from display RAM in an effort to reduce cost.

The very first place you should visit
is Mike Brutman's IBM PCjr Page. In
addition to a comprehensive listing technical
information and third-party products for the PCjr, he also has some very
useful modifications you can perform. You can also download the contents
of your cartridge ROMs using his utility and instructions. Highly
recommended viewing even if you don't own a PCjr.

Micro-Zone
hasn't been updated in a while (the owner appears MIA) but has some great PCjr information, including how to make the Tandy 1000 modification, and
various ways to add more than one floppy drive to the system.

Uncreative Labs
is dedicated to all old PCs and XTs, but has a lot of good information for
computing on the PCjr as well

The PC Enterprises
Guide to the PCjr used to offer lots of help on using and upgrading a PCjr. They let their domain lapse in 2004, so it is assumed they have gone
out of business, but the information was saved thanks to The Internet Archive.
In addition, their product offerings
used to be a good resource for upgrading Tandy 1000's as well.

Tandy's 1000 online resources amazingly seems to still be cache in the Internet Archive -- you can grab sheets and setup programs from there (as of 2008).

If you want to emulator a Tandy or PCjr to play old games of yore, it is pretty hard to beat the DOSBox emulator.

Tand-Em was the world's first Tandy 1000 and PCjr emulator. It
emulates the enhanced graphics and sound of the PCjr/Tandy so that you can enjoy your favorite classics in
all their glory, or run old software that required a PCjr or Tandy.

This IBM mirror of the PCC BBS files has
a lot of programs specific to the PCjr, including documents that outline specific problems and
workarounds, some music and graphics programs, patches to games to make them use the PCjr's 16-color
graphics mode, and system utilities.

Matthew Kowalski used to have a page up of Tandy-specific files that you could browse; thankfully, the Internet Archive still has the pages, including the files.